Review: Sex Vol. 1: The Summer of Hard trade paperback (Image Comics)

[Guest reviewer Scott Beattie blogs at Pop Culture Report]

Before you read any of his work, there is something that you need to know about Joe Casey: he's crazy. Not crazy in terms of his mental health, but in the kinds of ideas that he tries to put into his comics, which is partially why a writer of his stature has done so little work for the "Big 2" in the past decade. He's the kind of writer that you can imagine executives at Marvel and DC referring to as a "liability" [I love what he did on Superman and hope DC will collect it one day -- ed]. Fortunately, while all of his work is now creator-owned, he hasn't lost interest in superheroes, and last year, courtesy of Image, Casey began work on two new series, The Bounce and Sex. Both series offer a variation on a familiar hero -- Spider-man for The Bounce and Batman for Sex -- but takes them places story-wise that the nervous editors at Marvel and DC would surely never approve of.

The latter especially gives a reader the opportunity to see Joe Casey unleashed; Sex Vol. 1: The Summer of Hard is a wild ride, but it is also an incredibly thoughtful work with more heart than its intentionally exploitative title would suggest.

[Review contains spoilers]

With the characters in Sex, Casey pulls a neat trick; since nearly every character is an analogue of a Batman character, it allows him to immediately dive into the story without having to waste time providing background details or origin stories for the characters. It's the same technique Alan Moore used in Watchmen, and, like in that comic, it is used to great effect. Also interesting is that much of the initial story behind Sex echoes many of the same beats as Batman: Year One. It is apparent that this was Casey's intention by the way that he plays with the reader's expectations by reversing key elements; while each story begins with its protagonist returning to the city, in Year One Bruce Wayne is just beginning his superhero career, whereas Sex's Simon Cooke is ending his.

The key decision to cast Simon as retired works especially well due to the shared structure, the assumption being that the story is building to a point where he takes back up the mantle of the Armored Saint, only to once again subvert reader expectations by having him remain retired. The only true superheroics come from the Robin-stand-in Keenan, who carries on the fight against crime even after his partner retired.

There's another reason why everyone and everything in this comic is essentially a rip-off from Batman. In Summer of Hard Casey has taken the implicit and made it explicit. Every metaphor or underlying dirty metaphor that has been present in superhero comics ever since Fredric Wertham's Seduction of the Innocent is now on display. Essentially, what Casey is doing here is airing out the genre's "dirty laundry" as it were.

Simon himself is really compelling character. Apparently, a few readers have complained that he's too boring, but that's the point. Throughout The Summer of Hard we observe him dealing with the realization that he doesn't have a personality outside of being a superhero. Where Year One was the story of Bruce Wayne creating Batman, this is the story of Simon creating a real identity for himself. Obviously, sex is the metaphor for this process. At first, he is uncomfortable even watching it and, even once he makes up his mind to engage in it with the Catwoman-analogue Anabelle Lagravenese, he fails to do so. It is clear that Casey is building the story towards something -- the collection ends with Simon saying, "Okay ... Here we go" -- but it is left unclear what exactly that is. As a longtime reader of superhero comics, I can't say enough what a rare pleasure it is to have absolutely no idea what direction a series is headed in.

Equally important to the effectiveness of Sex is the artist. Artist Piotr Kowalski's work is absolutely incredible to behold, although there's nothing that can adequately describe his style -- one reviewer referred to it as "neo-pop retro-futurism," which is as good as summary as any. The contrast between the 1960's-style shots of Saturn City's skylines and the futuristic street-level views are not only beautiful, but thematically important as well. Colorist Brad Simpson is probably the unsung hero of this series; his color palette is bright and vibrant, full of orange, purple, and neon colors giving the series a completely different look from anything else in comics right now. Even the letterer Rus Wooton is allowed to flex his creative muscles by highlighting stressed words with color boxes rather than simply bold letters or italics.

A word of caution is necessary. As the title implies, sex is a vital element to this comic and every bit of it is depicted in graphic detail. Further, almost no kink or fetish is left uncovered. Anyone who was too squeamish to watch "the Gimp" scene in Pulp Fiction is probably best advised to stay away from Sex.

My only real disappointment with Sex Vol. 1: Summer of Hard comes from the collection itself. There's no real bonus material, no sketches or variant covers, and only a few advertisements for some of Casey's other books. Even though it pains me as a trade-reader to say this, I'd highly recommend that you buy the individual issues either at your LCS or on Comixology, because they include "Dirty Talk," Casey's letter column, wherein he goes on long, self-indulgent discussions about superheroes and the problems with corporate comics like DC and Marvel. Although this is a much pricier alternative ($1.99 each for all eight issues versus $8.80 for the trade), it's worth the extra money if for no other reason than to see Casey write something like, "WRITING CORPORATE COMICS MAKES YOUR DICK SOFT." Regardless of which route you chose, don't pass up Sex; it's a fantastic book.

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Review: Sex Criminals Vol. 1: One Weird Trick trade paperback (Image Comics)

Writer Matt Fraction sets up his narrative dichotomy between the profane and the reverent (or, less seriously, the bawdy and the sweet) right from the outset in Image's Sex Criminals Vol. 1: One Weird Trick. It is, after all, a book called Sex Criminals, which is enough to make anyone blush from reading it on the subway; the first issue, however, is about as brilliant and sensitive an exploration of puberty-and-sexuality-through-comics-science-fiction as you're going to find. Sex Criminals likes to bill itself as a sex comedy, but while it's funny, the truth is there's considerable more heart and thoughtfulness in this book than in your average American Pie or its ilk.

[Review contains spoilers]

Fraction and artist Chip Zdarksky's first two issues are the best of the best in this initial five issue collection. In flashback, they profile respectively the sexual awakening of both Suzie and Jon, including how they each discover they can make time stop when they orgasm. Sex is a thing but it's not the whole thing here; it all bleeds together into Suzie's relationship with her alcoholic mom after her dad dies (the scene where Suzie screams at her frozen mother is heartbreaking and wonderous), and Jon's adolescent sexual curiosity and, we learn later, mental illness.

Superhero comics are rife with metaphor, in which the secret identity stands for the self each of us hides from the world; in Sex Criminals, as even the characters note, all the real-life stigmatization and secretiveness surrounding sex is layered with the actual secret that Suzie and Jon each share, about stopping time. Equally Fraction makes literal the peace and self-awareness that can come with sexuality in the "quiet" that Suzie and Jon experience when sexually satisfied.

Sex Criminals, setting aside the "stopping time" stuff, is also simply about the evolution of a new relationship. Sex is, of course, ever-present in the book, but the actual sex acts performed by the characters on the page are relatively modest and tasteful (various puns and sight gags notwithstanding). Perhaps more interesting is the story of how two nice, relatively normal people meet, have an attraction, hang out, and then try to negotiate their newfound "togetherness" -- wanting to spend time together but also not wanting to seem too eager, and so on.

There is a relative normalcy to this particular aspect of Sex Criminals (as opposed to other, not-so-normal aspects) that's a nice change and fun to read, like early Strangers in Paradise. Neither Suzie nor Jon are "superheroes" (stopping time notwithstanding) nor particularly outstanding, just two regular people dealing with the regular obstacles of falling in love. This aspect is helped immensely by Zdarksky's art, especially his depiction of the large-nosed, lanky Jon, far from your traditional leading man but infinitely recognizable.

The fifth issue turns on two plot elements that set up the next book, one of which I liked more than the other. The first is that Jon reveals to Suzie his struggles with ADHD and related illnesses that might require him to be medicated, but that the medication so dulled his emotions and libido that he now "copes" in other ways (like stopping time and defecating on his boss's ficus). Jon acts like he has his issues under control, but Suzie is obviously concerned about it, and an educated reader knows Fraction is unlikely to let this go. This is an interesting wrinkle in the aforementioned "relationship plot" -- Suzie thought things were fine and that she knew Jon, and now she realizes she does not -- and also brings up additional metaphoric opportunities, that were Jon to be medicated and "healthy" he couldn't enter "the Quiet" (which, apropos of nothing, I'll mention Jon calls "Cumworld").

The other element is the revelation in the book of the "Sex Police," others who share Suzie and Jon's ability and want to prevent things like Suzie and Jon robbing a bank (which they do, to save Suzie's library, hence the name Sex Criminals). Though "sex police" is perhaps the book's funniest line among funny lines, they're my least favorite characters here. If we posit two people who can stop time by having sex to be "realistic" (or "magical realism," at least), the point in which Fraction introduces a shady cabal that police the world of time-stopping, and in tricked-out uniforms no less, is where Sex Criminals becomes a bit too much like Mind MGMT, Agents of SHIELD, or the umpteen covert agencies in the DC Universe for me. I like Sex Criminals as a risque rom-com and less so as a spy thriller; I certainly enjoyed this book enough to pick up the next volume, but my preference would be more character work, less thriller elements.

More amusing, in my opinion, than Fraction's invented names for sexual positions or the porn parodies that populate the story are the times that Fraction and Zdarksky break the "rules" of the book, acknowledging comics as comics and that we're all here to have fun, right? There's a particularly amusing riff on Family Circus set in a sex shop (and yes, when Fraction's Jon says to "cue the Benny Hill music," I could totally hear it). There's also a bar scene where Suzie does a rousing rendition of Queen's "Fat Bottomed Girls," except Fraction and company couldn't get rights to the lyrics (supposedly; hard to tell what's a gag here), so instead Fraction breaks the fourth wall and spitballs for a while on the making of the comic, even suggesting that what he talks about in the trade is different from what was in the single issue. Again, tough to tell what's real and what's a joke here, but it's enjoyable nonetheless to read a book that doesn't take itself so seriously.

I maintain that the title of this book, Sex Criminals, is a form of the book determining its own audience; the barrier for entry is whether one can get past reading a book actually called Sex Criminals. What might seem like comics's answer to Law & Order: SVU, however, is considerably far from it; instead, Matt Fraction and Chip Zdarksky's Sex Criminals Vol. 1: One Weird Trick is something ribald and smart and wholly unique. Saga is another comic that's filthy and yet full of heart; between Saga and Sex Criminals, Image is redefining how heartfelt "filth" can be.

[Includes original and variant covers, sketches, art process, and extras]

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Review: Cyber Force: Tin Men of War trade paperback (Top Cow/Image Comics)

[Review by Doug Glassman, who Tumblrs at '80s Marvel Rocks!]

Picking which “classic” Image book to review has been one of the most difficult things I’ve done for Collected Editions. I specifically wanted to review a book which tied into Deathmate, which removed half of Image’s creators from consideration. I reviewed a WildC.A.Ts story not too long ago in Stormwatch: Final Orbit and the wasted potential of Grifter makes it too depressing to read the old version. Linkara has already taken apart the first issues of Youngblood in a more thorough manner than I ever could; Brigade doesn’t exist in trade form, thank God. I was all set to review the first Gen13 trade, but Deathmate was actually their first appearance, plus I want to contrast that with Gail Simone’s version in a later review. That left Cyber Force (or Cyberforce, I’ve seen it parsed both ways) as the default option.

I give Marc and Eric Silvestri credit for having a good amount of creative ambition. This first trade, Cyber Force: The Tin Men of War, is overflowing with concepts beneath its hologram cover, introducing a world rife with mutants, superheroes, conspiracies, and cyber-surgery. The mutants especially open up a lot of questions which aren’t properly answered. One of the key flaws of the early Image titles is that they were trying to emulate the complexity of Marvel and DC without the actual history to back it up. For instance, Uncanny X-Men had enough characters to warrant half a dozen spin-offs because those characters had been created over a span of thirty years. Conversely, Rob Liefeld introduced two dozen or so characters on two Youngblood teams within one issue.

The Silvestris keep the roster small on Cyber Force; the titular team only has five members at the start and much of the book is about recruiting a sixth, with the seventh joining near the end ... I think. Issue four ends so abruptly that I’m left assuming that in the next book Ballistic, at first their arch-villain, switches sides due to events in the plot. That trade, incidentally, helped me decide to review The Tin Men of War in the first place, since its title, Assault With A Deadly Woman, is one of the few cases of actual cleverness I’ve seen from an early Image title. I’ll also congratulate the creators for having some good female characters in Cyblade, Ballistic, Velocity, and Killjoy, although I could only figure out that the latter was a woman at first because of her ridiculous “boobs and butt” pose in her introduction.

Another change from the traditional "classic" Image formula is that the team doesn’t raid a villain’s base until said fourth issue. We instead meet our main characters while they protect a mutant mayoral candidate from assassination, dynamically introducing Cable, Psylocke, Gambit, Colossus, and Wolverine—I mean, Stryker, Cyblade, Heatwave, Impact, and Ripclaw. It’s not nearly as blatant as Shaft being a stand-in for Roy Harper, but the influences are definitely there, especially in Cyblade’s poorly-explained powers. Newcomer Velocity is a speedster, which is a refreshingly old-school power set compared to Ballistic’s ability to ... do whatever it is she does. Control bullets? Adding even more confusion is a crossover with Pitt which doesn’t add much to the proceedings.

Ripclaw was designed to be the breakout character, and I do like that he’s Native American without having obvious visual cues to indicate it. But I need to talk about the four-armed elephant in the room: Morgan Stryker. I first encountered Stryker’s design in action figure form a few years ago and found it endlessly amusing that his multiple arms are gathered as three on one side and one on the other. This amusement carries forward to his comic book appearances, especially in Deathmate; next week I’ll show you a particular panel which may be the silliest thing I’ve ever seen in a comic book. Why would they only put two extra arms on one side of his body?! The required concerns about balance and the necessary modifications required for his whole body take me out of the story every time I see him.

Marc Silvestri is probably the second-best artist of the Image founders, right behind Jim Lee and right before Whilce Portacio. There are points where I can tell that he would have done a better job if he weren’t caving in to the stylization of the time. His storytelling needs some work, but then he’s illustrating a fairly choppy plot. (Velocity and another character escape at the end of one issue only to be recaptured off-panel in the next. Huh?) With the character designs, I again give Silvestri credit for at least going with creative ideas, even if they don’t always work out. Perhaps the strangest is Splitzkrieg, a being with one set of legs supporting two complete torsos; one is a proper English gentlemen, while the other is a Nazi who speaks pidgin German. How he didn’t make it into the Strykeforce spin-off when lame concepts like “Killrazor” did is an absolute shame; Splitzkrieg’s origin needs to be told.

The Cyber Force: Tin Men of War trade includes a preview of Strykeforce, and it’s one of the most awful things I’ve ever read, an utter waste compared to Cyber Force. In a sense, Cyber Force is everything Youngblood was trying to do but with better writing and artwork. It’s the platonic ideal of an early Image title: lots of relatively flat characters with silly names, stilted dialogue, confusing plot threads, needless cameos, contortionist poses, and a deliberate effort to be easily adaptable to other media. But at least the Silvestris put effort into their work; I can at least judge it as having artistic merit, something I can’t say about Youngblood.

Next week, I gaze into the abyss a day earlier than usual with Deathmate. For now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to grab a hacksaw and a few wrestling action figures to start a Splitzkrieg custom toy. My DC Universe Classics Atom Smasher needs an arch-enemy.

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Review: Glory, Vol. 1: The Once and Future Destroyer trade paperback (Image Comics)

[Review by Doug Glassman, who Tumblrs at Hell Yeah '80s Marvel!]

Despite the many flaws of Rob Liefeld’s work, he can at least take solace in the fact that his concepts have been turned into modern classics by more talented creators. Alan Moore used Supreme for a post-modern take on Superman, while more recently, Brandon Graham and a host of artists have transformed Prophet into a unique space epic. Joe Keatinge and Ross Campbell’s Glory, Vol. 1: The Once and Future Destroyer, another of the recent “Liefeld revivals,” provides a clever take on the concept of a warrior woman.

From the cover, you can immediately tell that the modern version of Glory is not a conventional heroine. Back when she was created, Glory was basically just a Wonder Woman copy in both her looks (white hair aside) and her origins (with the “twist” of being half-demon and half-Amazonian). She wore a skimpy red outfit and was often drawn in provocative poses. The new Glory is over eight feet of muscle with only the barest hints of curves. Her new outfit is essentially a red pair of overalls. Her hair, while still stark white, is now in a pair of long ponytails, giving her a surprisingly girlish look. Compared to other highly muscular superheroines, like She-Hulk and Power Girl, Glory is highly unique.

Glory’s new look is now more consistent with her new personality. Keatinge has altered her backstory, changing her parentage from mystical to alien. Normally, I would be against such a radical revamping of a character, but Glory was such a paper cut-out of a character in the first place that there was really nothing to lose. The new origin allows Glory to differentiate herself from Wonder Woman, and it also gives Campbell an opportunity to draw unique character designs, such as Glory’s “ugly cute” assistant Henry and various horrific monsters. However, Glory’s past adventures still happened, leaving her as one of the few World War II-era superheroes of the Image universe. This was a wise move, as it allows her interactions with Supreme to remain canon.

In the wider scheme of the book, Glory isn’t the central character. That role falls to Riley Barnes, a journalist and Glory super-fan investigating what happened to her disappeared idol. She is linked to Glory by mysterious dreams and a destiny that unfolds in a shocking fast-forward look into the future. (I was hoping that this was the same future in which Prophet takes place, but unfortunately, the dates don’t seem to match up.) It takes a little time to warm up to Riley, who starts out as a simple audience surrogate but who eventually becomes a key ally. It’s a welcome transformation to see Riley become an effective supporting character, even if she isn’t quite ready to become a battle-hardened warrior.

There’s another major human in Glory’s orbit: Gloria West, with whom Glory once shared a body during Alan Moore’s very brief run with the character. Exactly what happened to split them up has yet to be revealed, but Gloria serves as a mother figure to both Riley and Glory. She too joins the fight later on, a trait that really endeared her to me. It’s clear from the beginning that something terrible has happened to Glory, who is fighting the evil influences in her genetics. A few key flashbacks show that quite a bit of Glory’s “Image edginess” and anger issues can be traced back to her evil father, Silverfall. All the same, we get a revelation about Silverfall and his motives that makes it unclear whether his aim to abduct Glory is an evil plot or just the actions of a caring father.

Even with all of Keatinge’s changes to Glory’s character, it’s Campbell who really makes the book shine. There’s no cheesecake art or lustful, spine-shattering “boobs and butt” poses -- a nearly impossible feat for a book where the three leads are all female. Even Birds of Prey and Captain Marvel can’t avoid some "fan service," but the characters of Glory have been designed to be almost aggressively “anti-fan-service.” Campbell does have a bit of a problem with drawing Riley cross-eyed, and this, along with a bit too yellow of a color palette,  makes her look like an Asian caricature at some points, but it’s a flaw that gets worked out as the story goes on.

There’s quite a bit of gore, and while Invincible has desensitized me to Image’s love of blood and guts, there are a few scenes that actually use violence effectively. This is especially true with the flashbacks to Glory’s time with Supreme and the flash-forwards to a dark future. It helps that we’re following Riley, who is as shocked as the audience is at all of the violence going on around her.

Keatinge and Campbell’s book is part of a broader trend of Image’s newer books to have stronger writing and better art. It’s an impressive change for a company which many (myself included) once derided for the quality of its work. They still have to improve their ability to meet deadlines, but Glory doesn’t fall prey to that issue.

For only ten dollars, you get six issues in Glory: The Once and Future Destroyer, making it almost a must-buy in a world where $25 Marvel hardcovers contain only five issues. Despite the association with Liefeld, the Glory contained within is almost entirely a new character, keeping only the good parts of her old self and reinventing the rest.

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Review: Happy! by Grant Morrison trade paperback (Image Comics)

The broad strokes of Grant Morrison and Darick Robertson's four-issue miniseries Happy!, newly collected -- a Christmas story in which a hitman reluctantly teams with a cartoon blue horse to save a kidnapped girl -- tells the reader most of what they can expect from the book. Happy!'s arc is fairly predictable in the way of the other Christmas tales it honors and lampoons, but the enjoyment comes in watching how Morrison dizzily mashes up crime drama and Christmas story cliches into a story demented and warm at the same time.

[Review contains spoilers]

Happy! teams former police-detective-turned-hitman Nick Sax with Happy, the equine imaginary friend of a girl named Haley, who only Nick can see. Nick's on the run from Mr. Blue because of a botched hit job and seconds away from torture at the hands of Mr. Smoothie (all of this purposefully like something out of a Quentin Tarantino film) when Happy helps him escape in exchange for helping Happy rescue the kidnapped Haley.

The story's real attraction, again, comes from the juxtaposition of an extremely graphic crime story with a flying blue cartoon character; Robertson is an inspired art choice, blending pages reminiscent of his work on The Boys with animated ridiculousness. The creators, appropriately, ratchet the filth of the book to absurdity, all the better to make Happy's presence equally absurd. When, on the first page, Robertson draws a man vomiting in an alley while at the same time a dog pees on the man, the reader gets a sense what they're in for, especially set against two rival hitmen discussing, also Tarantino-like, which part of the male or female anatomy their rival Sax best epitomizes.

I only regretted that Morrison puts a foul mouth on Happy (mild, as compared to the other characters). Though Happy is at times predictably irreverent as one might expect an imaginary horse to be -- spouting fluff a la Roger Rabbit -- at other times he uses words like "screw" and "ass," where I thought it might be stronger if Happy were separate, mind as well as body, from Sax's world.

Though Sax is initially resistant to Happy and his mission, the reader knows Sax will eventually come around, so the arc of the story isn't all that surprising. Happy! actually works better when Morrison lets the story unfold unrelated to the larger plot, as when Sax uses Happy to cheat at a poker game, or when Happy peers through walls to scope out Sax's later targets. If Tarantino is strong here, so is Harvey, though Jimmy Stewart never used Harvey quite like this.

If Morrison is riffing on crime movies and buddy comedies here, he's riffing even more on classic Christmas tales. Happy is certainly a Clarence to Sax's -- again -- Jimmy Stewart, though perhaps the best moment of all of Happy! is when Happy tries to prove to Sax that the Christmas spirit exists and that people are inherently good, and instead encounters a train of the surliest, most misbegotten people who ever graced the page. It is a familiar Christmas story moment -- with shades of the Whos down in Whoville enjoying Christmas despite the Grinch's antics -- but gone horribly, horribly wrong, and Morrison honors his source material even as he twists it delightfully.

In the end, after Sax has both killed Santa Claus and shot a priest for good measure, he does indeed, if predictably, become the St. Nick that the story needs. Happy!'s ending is equal parts It's a Wonderful Life and crime noir again, as Morrison reveals the McGuffin "password" that underlies the book, which unlocks a fortune that will support Haley and her mother.

If Happy! should become a movie, as rumored, hopefully those involved don't separate it from its Christmas roots -- it would be possible to do, but the story would be lesser for it. Happy! is a delightfully wrong Christmas story, the kind of thing you might read while the family watches Rudolph for the eighteenth time, irreverent but also faithful to its predecessors. This is neither Grant Morrison's most creative nor surprising work, but it's certainly worth a few hours of holiday entertainment.

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